YogaQuest and a Bat’leth Tournament

I’ve been sharing bits and pieces of information about Geek Culture on this blog. One chapter, “You Can’t Find This Anyplace Else,” covers two special events at CONvergence: YogaQuest and the 13th annual IKV WarHammer Invitational Bat’leth Tournament. I also include a sidebar on “Geek Physique,” which is part of the Twin Cities’ Geek Partnership Society, and another sidebar explaining “boffing.”

Here are two tidbits about each of the special events featured in the chapter.

On YogaQuest:

“We call YogaQuest classes ‘a geek’s gateway drug,’ because people come, and they try it, and they say, ‘You know what? I really like hanging out with these people, and I really like this movement that my body’s doing, and I feel good,’ and so some geeks that I never thought would start coming to the traditional classes are becoming members of the studio.” — Justine “Justini Yogini” Mastin

On fighting with a bat’leth (made of foam wrapped with duct tape):

“A lot of it is ‘Hey, let’s get together with padded weapons and see what works.’ I did bo staff and tae kwon do many years ago. Some people extrapolated from sword and other things they already know. Just kind of playing with it, you can learn it in about five minutes. Now you won’t be good at in five minutes, but you can get a general idea of how it works.” — Laura Thurston

If you are interested in Geek Culture, please go to my Kickstarter campaign and contribute. You can get a photo from the book, the book itself, even a tour of CONvergence!